Captain John Smith eBook

In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith
seem; to have inquired about this lost colony of King
Paspahegh, for he says, “what he knew of the
dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as of
certaine men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan,
cloathcd like me.”

[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584,
saw children with chestnut-colored hair.]

We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the “Historie
of Travaile into Virginia Britannia,” published
from the manuscript by the Hakluyt Society in 1849,
in which it is intimated that seven of these deserted
colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is
a first-rate authority for what he saw. He arrived
in Virginia in 1610 and remained there two years,
as secretary of the colony, and was a man of importance.
His “Historie” was probably written between
1612 and 1616. In the first portion of it, which
is descriptive of the territory of Virginia, is this
important passage: “At Peccarecamek and
Ochanahoen, by the relation of Machumps, the people
have houses built with stone walls, and one story
above another, so taught them by those English who
escaped the slaughter of Roanoke. At what time
this our colony, under the conduct of Captain Newport,
landed within the Chesapeake Bay, where the people
breed up tame turkies about their houses, and take
apes in the mountains, and where, at Ritanoe, the
Weroance Eyanaco, preserved seven of the English alive—­four
men, two boys, and one young maid (who escaped [that
is from Roanoke] and fled up the river of Chanoke),
to beat his copper, of which he hath certain mines
at the said Ritanoe, as also at Pamawauk are said to
be store of salt stones.”

This, it will be observed, is on the testimony of
Machumps. This pleasing story is not mentioned
in Captain Newport’s “Discoveries”
(May, 1607). Machumps, who was the brother of
Winganuske, one of the many wives of Powhatan, had
been in England. He was evidently a lively Indian.
Strachey had heard him repeat the “Indian grace,”
a sort of incantation before meat, at the table of
Sir Thomas Dale. If he did not differ from his
red brothers he had a powerful imagination, and was
ready to please the whites with any sort of a marvelous
tale. Newport himself does not appear to have
seen any of the “apes taken in the mountains.”
If this story is to be accepted as true we have to
think of Virginia Dare as growing up to be a woman
of twenty years, perhaps as other white maidens have
been, Indianized and the wife of a native. But
the story rests only upon a romancing Indian.
It is possible that Strachey knew more of the matter
than he relates, for in his history he speaks again
of those betrayed people, “of whose end you
shall hereafter read in this decade.” But
the possessed information is lost, for it is not found
in the remainder of this “decade” of his
writing, which is imperfect. Another reference
in Strachey is more obscure than the first. He
is speaking of the merciful intention of King James